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Didn't Ask. I'm Naisha Frey, and I'm here again
with my friend, Dr. Paul Fleming, ready to keep
this series rolling. Beyond the Band -Aid, prevention,
power, and public health equity. Grab your coffee,
settle in, and let's jump back into the conversation.
I appreciate you for doing that, making those
statements in regard to, like, this is not a
real word. but Disney -fying poverty, right?
That was not my intention. And I appreciate you
for making that clarification because yes, being
poor and lacking your core necessities is not,
like we talked about, you know, just hoarding
is not the answer. Being poor and lacking. you
know, necessities of life and living and dignity
and humanity. That's not the answer either. So
that is important for us to, you know, clarify
that there's somewhere in the middle that we're
searching to balance. So what I want to do now
is talk a little bit about, so I have had this
Especially with the political environment and
different groups, racial groups, ethnic groups,
socioeconomic groups, like calling each other
out and being like, well, why aren't you doing
this? And why didn't you do that? And specifically,
you know, especially for people who are left
-leaning, who are more liberal, which I consider
myself to be more left -leaning, more liberal
than not. I don't think that's a surprise to
anybody. There's a lot of rhetoric around, you
know, well, why aren't Black people out in the
streets like they usually are? You know, or why
aren't Black people showing up in the same ways?
You know, and some of the quick snapbacks are
we showed up. We was 92 and 86 percent on November
5th or whatever day it was. So y 'all got to
figure it out. You know, on top of some of the
challenges that come, the violence that comes
from Black bodies and faces and voices being
present on front lines, what that triggers for
a lot of law enforcement and now, unfortunately,
military presence or ICE presence or whoever
is out there with a gun and a badge. And so some
of what people might have seen me. talk about
on my social media handles is this hashtag get
your people um and the get your people is basically
to say I'm gonna get my people we gonna figure
some stuff out we are down with the left -leaning
we got to do something better right but there's
another group of people that are talking about
us that they need to work on their people i .e
especially the problematic with the white folks.
And I've already had a show about the real talk
with Black and Latino people. If y 'all haven't
heard it, you definitely need to go listen to
it. The Get Your People campaign. But I imagine
in talking to my family and friends, it's not
that easy, right? Especially when folks are entrenched
in their privilege and wanting to continue to
Advantage themselves and have that life of ease
and continue to be willfully in no sense. And
all of the rest of it. So what have you found,
if there's any, strategies that help you to move
people with privilege from just knowing about
injustice? Because we even have some of these
problems on the left side. Knowing about injustice.
to actually doing something about it? Yeah, it's
a great question. And I want to start by saying
I definitely don't have all the answers like
I wish I did. But, you know, I think it's tricky
in the sense that I do think you're absolutely
right, that there are a certain subset of those
who see the injustice, they're willing to say
something about it, or at least... make sure
that their friends and neighbors hear them say
that they're mad about the injustice. But when
push comes to shove, taking action about the
injustice would kind of disrupt their easy lifestyle
and they don't want to do that. And so I think
that is one challenging group to think about.
I think there's another group. And this is the
group that I think I'm a little bit more interested
in spending energy on and with. There's another
group that sees the injustice, wants to say something
about it, make sure people hear them say this
injustice is not fair. And then they legitimately
just don't know what to do about it. It feels
too big for them to tackle. I think also when
we're talking about. not necessarily all white
people, but certain segments of white folks,
they have not exercised the protest muscle. They
have not exercised the way that other communities
have had to fight year after year for decades
and centuries. White folks haven't in the same
way. They need better tools or they need to understand
better tools. So that's where I think that segment
of the population. needs ideas and strategies
and organizing get them moving um because i have
you know i've had a lot of conversations with
folks i just you know i just don't even know
where to start or i don't know what what to do
and so i i do think that sort of paralysis it's
not just white folks that are feeling that at
this moment right and what we're facing is really
big and there is a lot of uncertainty about what
we can do it's not like we all have one solution
that we think everybody should be doing. But,
you know, one of the things that I think about,
first off, nothing's going to change overnight.
So don't think that you got to dive in and like
tackle the whole problem tonight, tomorrow, this
week. So you got that long -term perspective
and then break it up. What do you want to see
in five or 10 years? So then What do you have
to do on a shorter timeframe? There's this organization
based in Detroit called Sevilla, and they talk
about 10 -3 -1 -3. What do you want to achieve
in 10 years? Okay, if you're going to do that
in 10 years, then what do we have to do in three
years? It's like the 10 -year vision. Then what
do we have to have done by three years? Then
you back it up to one year. And then you say,
what do I have to do in the next three months
to set us on that path, right? And so I think
sometimes it's that type of thinking. that people
need to be guided towards because they get stuck
in the if you let's talk about the we mentioned
the kind of deportation machine right the mystery
of deportation that has been ramped up is both
terrible and massive and operating at a federal
level right and so when you think about what
what like what naisha what do you and i do about
that particular fact right it's overwhelming
so i think in the face of injustices like that,
it's really important to break it down and then
also be thinking local, right? So if I think
about that particular problem, I'm thinking about,
well, what are immediate needs in my local community
that I might be able to address? And it could
be literally as simple as donating 20 bucks,
50 bucks, like that is one step in the right
direction, right? It is not solving systems,
it is not changing the world, but it at least
is better than me only saying wow this deportation
regime is awful right it gets me past it gets
me past just saying the thing to actually take
an action the other thing I might do is think
about well what are my local organizations that
are actually focused on this issue and I know
here in my county there's there's a wonderful
organization that works on immigrant rights so
I would be Directing people to how do you plug
into that, right? How do you plug into what is
the support that they need in this moment? And
then I think there's also the piece about like
educating yourself about what is the vision that
we actually want, right? Okay, so we don't want
a deportation regime. What do we want? What do
we want for our immigrant communities? What do
we want? And starting to get a better handle
on what our vision is and using our imagination.
you know i think it's a way to get people unstuck
from that place of just this is an injustice
right and so i i think i mean back to your original
question i think i strayed from your question
a little bit but like no you're there that when
when you're going to get your people like that's
what you're going to help them do you're going
to help them see that tiny step forward You're
not going to tell them what they're doing is
wrong. You're not going to tell them these other
things. You're going to take collective action.
You're going to get a group of people together
to take one small step forward. Check in. How
was that one small step? OK, we all survived.
We did it. We did the thing. What's our next
step? And that's, I think, how we can redirect
people. Yeah, I think the one thing that I would
add to that. is what my show does, right? Is
like check in on your assumptions, check in on
your blind spots. Like one of the things that
I found that one of the reasons why I love this
show is that I'm actually able to learn, you
know, alongside my guests. And in particular,
Julissa Soto, who was my guest for, you know,
the conversation about the Black and Latino community.
She shared with me not just her own story of
how she came from Mexico to... America and what
all took place, which was an amazing story that
I could not imagine. I then put myself in her
position and said, would you have done that?
I don't know. I've never had to be in that position
before. Aha, you have some privilege. You have
some privilege. Recognizing that, then further
understanding what is actually the problem. These
folks are saying, well, you should just get your
paperwork or come into the country the right
way. Well, I'm an American. I've always been
an American. I don't even know what that process
is. Can we unpack that? And so in that conversation,
she unpacked some of those things, a lot of those
things. And I said, wow, this is a lot like what
we see in other parts of our country, our systems,
our policies, where there are things that don't
add up. things that don't make sense, you know,
and they create a bigger problem than what's
actually there in the first place. Yes, there
are people that are here that have been violent,
that cause trouble, that cause chaos. There are
Americans here that do those things. So that's
not even... I don't even know if that's a good
reason to be getting rid of people. But the point
is, is that, you know, just for me, it was like
I had to examine some of my blind spots and also
recognizing my privileges. I've never had to
really seriously, seriously think about leaving
my home country. Never. Now, I've thought about
it. I've looked at some nice YouTube videos,
but I've never really had to like have a go bag.
You know what I'm saying? Maybe I should, but
it has not gotten to that point yet. And that
is a point of privilege. And so for me, that
was important for me to recognize when I was
having that conversation and examining, like,
how do I build solidarity with this community?
Or is solidarity even a possibility with this
community? Because we come from two totally different.
perspectives and histories. And there's a whole
lot that I don't know about them. And there's
a whole lot that they don't know about me. And
there's a whole lot of prejudice and what's the
word, you know, these assumptions and stereotypes.
That's the word I'm looking for. Stereotypes
that we have about each other, why you're here,
why you ain't doing better than what you're doing.
Why are you doing better than what I'm doing?
You know, all this stuff. Yeah. It gets tiring.
Yeah. And you know, It makes me think back to
what you were saying earlier about the sharing,
because, you know, think about all of these movements
are so much stronger when we've got each other's
back, right? When the movement for immigrant
rights has the back of Black Lives Matter and
vice versa, both of those movements become stronger,
right? And it is, I mean, certainly there's...
It's not as simple as that, so I'll acknowledge
it, but there's an abundance, right, in that
sharing mentality. It's not either I have rights
or you have rights and it's a zero -sum game
because that mentality is just going to keep
us where we're at, right? And so this idea of
an abundance of, like, we can share and therefore
we can create more and more. It's not... If I
have, you don't have. It's what do we have together?
And I think that really applies also to how we
fight injustice, how we are activists in our
communities, kind of recognizing that, yes, you
may be fighting one fight primarily, but that
those fights are connected and that we do need
to show up for each other because all these systems
are connected. The deportation regime, at the
end of the day, is a violent law enforcement
apparatus that works in many of the same ways
that local police can be violent against many
marginalized communities, especially Black communities.
And so those two things are connected, right?
And when we separate those fights, we're less
powerful, right? Yeah, it's divide and conquer.
You don't win that way, right? Yeah. If you're
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And I appreciate you saying that too, because
what is happening is there's also a sense of,
I don't know if nervousness is the right word,
but vigilance is definitely it. Nervousness is
a part of it because They're starting to go after
Haitians. And all my Haitian friends look like
my cousins. You know what I mean? So it's like,
well, what is that? What is, wait, what's going
on here? Granted, I have a passport. I don't
know if it's still like, if it is expired yet.
I need to get it together. Like we need to get
our paperwork together. But that's crazy that
we have to think about getting our paperwork
together. And when I think about that, it takes
me back to some. like very traumatic historic
events from my people of, you know, people from
slavery, you know, Black people who were enslaved,
African peoples who had been enslaved. The way
that you could move about from place to place
is you had to have a note from either the person
who owned you because you were their property.
that said you had permission to go from this
place to that or you had to be carrying with
you your freedom papers if you happen to be free
and you would hope and pray that if someone asked
for them that they didn't rip them up burn them
up and throw them away because we didn't have
lamination back then we definitely didn't have
any type of what you know what i'm saying so
you know it's bringing back some really bad you
know like associations It's making me think about
how the birther movement started with Trump,
you know, hating on Barack where he wanted to
see his papers. He was denying, you know, the
fact that President Barack Obama was an American
citizen and questioning that and starting that
whole movement. And so now it's trickling down
and creating this issue with immigration. And
one of the big dog whistles of this whole thing
was Trump being in the debate. talking about
the Haitians are eating cats and dogs. What?
Yeah. So, you know, all these things are connected.
And that is your point, that we cannot overcome
this trauma, this violence, this terrorism, if
we're all in our respective corners, just trying
to protect our individual, you know, identity.
and community. With that being said, you have
a new book. I do. You have a new book that's
coming out called Imagine Doing Better. I love
that title. I don't know if I told you that.
One of the reasons why I love that title, and
that's not the only part of the title, but that's
the main part, is that I often say, do better.
Folks be messing up. Do better. And you say,
no, let's imagine it. Let's go there, right?
Let's go ahead and let's put in the work to imagine
to do better. You even gave some community members
some ideas about how to do better. You're concerned.
You're on alert. You know there's some violence
and some terrorism and some injustice going on
and it is not sitting right with you. So let's
think about what it is to do better. And in this
book, You talk a lot about prevention thinking.
Prevention thinking. One of the things that resonates
with me in this moment about prevention thinking,
and you're going to tell our audience and tell
me to a little bit more about how this term really
shows up in your everyday life and your studies
and things like that. But one of the things that
comes to my mind is, you know, I was a part of
a group of thinkers and community workers and
social adjustment movement people that were concerned
about this thing called adverse childhood experiences,
ACEs. And it was brought to our attention that
a lot of the trauma or disruption that people
are feeling in the right here and now can be
traced back to what happened to them as children.
That's not a big... aha moment, but it happened
to be like, we need to go back and examine this
and pay more attention to it. And one of the
strategies of dealing with ACEs was resilience.
And so we started talking about resilience and
we need to teach people resilience and these
different resilience strategies. And none of
this was bad. None of this was negative. None
of this was like nonsense. To me, it was very
legitimate. But as we grow, we learn, right?
As time passes, if you're paying attention, you
start learning. And one of the things that came
to mind was conversations that I was hearing,
family, friends, social media, blah, blah, which
was like, but can we talk about why so much resilience
is needed? Can we prevent the need for all of
that resilience? Maybe it's too much resilience.
Maybe there's too much going on. So when you
when I just thought about, you know, your book
about doing better, imagine doing better and
prevention thinking. That's one of the things
that came to my mind. So I'm going to hush now
and I'm going to let you tell me and our audience,
you know, what is this term? What does that mean
in everyday terms for you and the work that you
do? Yeah, absolutely. I know you have a lot of
listeners who work in the field of public health.
And so a lot of prevention thinking is based
on ideas that we know and love in public health.
But it's trying to bring that lens to the entire
way we think about structuring our society, how
we make laws, how we make policies. So not just
thinking about what are our public health policies,
but how do we think about the environment and
education and other things through this with
this prevention thinking lens and when i say
prevention thinking i'm mostly talking about
a couple of different things which we know really
well in in public health world but you know we
are trying to get to the root cause of what an
issue is right so when we think about any problem
that we're facing in society whether it's related
to violence or poverty, whatever it is, we're
going and thinking about what is the root cause?
And we can just, you know, the easiest way to
get at that is you just keep on asking why, why,
why, why? And eventually you get to the point
where you're thinking about systems or bigger,
bigger level issues that need to be tackled.
So, you know, the first step of prevention thinking
is like, what is the root cause? The second piece,
again, will be familiar to a public health audience,
is that we're prioritizing primary prevention.
So if you remember back to graduate school, thinking
about the different levels of prevention, right?
Primary prevention is, let's just try to stop
the thing before it happens in the first place.
Because we also can do things like secondary
and tertiary prevention, which is... Oh, once
you have the disease, let's think about what
medicine we can give you. Once you have this
problem, what can we do to make it a little bit
better, right? So those are different levels
of prevention. What prevention thinking invites
us to do is let's just prevent this thing from
happening in the first place. Let's try to make
it so they're... There isn't really violence
in our communities. Let's try to make it so that
your uncle doesn't get diabetes in the first
place. Let's try to make it so that people are
not criminalized in the first place and end up
in jail for years and decades. What can we do,
right? And then the final thing is that when
we're thinking about prevention, we are prioritizing
the wants and needs of the impacted community.
So it's not me. And what I mean by that is I
might have an understanding of what root causes
are and I'll want to prioritize primary prevention,
but I'm not doing anything until I actually know
what the community that's in question wants and
needs. And this is that concept of nothing about
us without us. Communities should have agency
and control over what is going on in their own.
So that's what I mean when I talk about prevention
thinking. And I think, you know, more broadly,
the book invites readers to use their imagination
for what the society that they actually think
we all need. Like, what is it that we need in
this world, in this country? And, you know, there's
a quote in the book. It's from Robin D .G. Kelly's
book, Freedom Dreams. he says the map to a new
world is in the imagination and i just love that
quote because the thing is is i i think we all
recognize or certainly the listeners of this
podcast recognize we need a new world we need
a world that is built on those principles of
sharing the principles of equity right we need
that world and so this quote the map to the new
world is in the imagination We're never going
to get to that new world if we don't dream it
up first. And so that's that piece of the imagine
doing better is we got to start with our imagination.
I think the other two pieces the book really
highlights is reflection and action. And of course,
the action piece is about the doing better. I
appreciate your compliments of the title. I also
love it because I think those pieces are so connected
and complimentary. we can't just stop at the
imagination, right? And we can't stop at the
reflection. We have to actually do better. And
so the last half of the book really talks about
like, if we want to transform our society, how
do we do it? How do we think about doing that?
How do we, and I talk a little bit about how
we transform ourselves, how we transform those
around us. So that's getting to kind of the question
you asked earlier about. about getting your people
but then also like which systems should we be
transforming how what are the strategies and
approaches and tools we can use so really i like
to think of the book as it's a roadmap for readers
for how we get to that that better world and
it does start with imagination so a part of what
i hear you saying is that in addition to my hashtag
of get your people I should also be saying, get
your book. Imagine doing better. I love it. I
love it. I won't complain about that. I don't
know. I don't know if the hashtag will be as
popular, but we can work with it. Thank you for
tuning in to Questions You Didn't Ask with me,
Nyesha Frey, and my guest, Dr. Paul Fleming.
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